I get into my car and drive blindly, taking turns without thinking until I realize that I’m on the freeway, heading out of the city. I keep driving, betrayal and hatred burning through me, every fresh wave stronger than the last.
As night falls, I snarl a promise to the empty road ahead. “Lilia Aranova. You are dead fucking woman.”
5
Lilia
“Is she awake yet?”
“Shh. He’s over there in the dark.”
“I can’t see him.”
“He’s right there, staring into her cell.”
“Which one?”
“The scary one.”
“They’re all scary, Olivia!”
“Thecoldone. The one who wanted Celeste to suck his dick, but then he changed his mind.”
“Do you think he knows this new woman? I think he knows her.”
“Who cares? Just shut up. Do you want to end up like Valentina?”
“Poor Valentina.”
“She should have kept her mouth shut. The scarred one, he hates screaming.”
“He hates us all. We’re all going to die.”
The whispers fade away like a dissolving dream as I open my eyes. I must have been dreaming. My body feels heavy and there’s a sick feeling in my stomach as I swallow. Just great. I’m overseas and I’m coming down with the flu. If I look really sick, they won’t let me on my flight.
Adrenaline shoots through me. My flight. I don’t remember setting my alarm before I went to sleep. I push myself up to sitting and the bed feels strange beneath me. My mattress at the hotel was thick and soft, but I can feel metal slats beneath an inch of foam, and a scratchy blanket drags across my legs. The air is clammy, and a light shines in my eyes through the darkness. Darkness glimpsed through the bars of a cage.
A jolt goes through me. I had a nightmare. A tattooed Russian with dark hair and dark eyes was pursuing me through a building. Blood dripped down his face and chest, and I knew that if he caught me, he’d stab me to death in a frenzy. It’s not my usual Russian assassin dream in which I’m shot in the back of the head by a cold, taciturn killer, or thrown off a building to make my death look like a suicide. It was twice as terrifying.
My hands and T-shirt are smeared with blood. I let out a gasp and shoot to my feet. But it was adream. What’s the last thing I remember? What’s the last thing I did?
I left the fashion show with a Kazakh girl, and she was mad at me for getting us fired. I ran into the Lugovskayas and drank coffee with them, and then—
Screaming.
Stabbing.
Blood.
I feel quickly beneath my T-shirt and run my hands up and down my arms and legs. No wounds. I’m not bleeding. It’s not my blood, it’s the Lugovskayas’. As I’m trying to come to terms with being covered in my father’s friends’ blood, my hand drifts slowly up to feel the side of my neck and I find a sore spot. Something…pierced me here?
Footsteps crunch beyond the bars. Fingers push into my cell and clench tight around the metal. Tattooed fingers marked with suns, moons, and crosses.
A deep voice whispers in the darkness, “Lilia Aranova.”
My blood turns to ice in my veins. The figure beyond the bars is in deep shadow and I can’t see his face. “My name’s Yulia Petrova.”
“You are liar, Lilia Aranova.”
